UK vs. Pakistan
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So far, CBRD's International section has toured North America, seen the highways of the rich European states and even dipped a toe into one of the remaining Communist countries. But so far we haven't visited any of the developing nations of Asia, arguably the place to look for today's most rapidly evolving road networks.
Shahed Chaudhary, a second-generation Pakistani, returned to his ancestral home to visit relatives, and in the process did some travelling on Pakistan's fledgeling motorway network, where - much to the bemusement of his family - he took a number of photos.
"12 years ago during my last visit to Pakistan, travelling on the roads was a real nightmare. Most of the roads I travelled between towns were single carriageway made worse by atrocious driving habits of the locals. You literally could be negotiating a bend and face two lorries heading towards you on each of the two lanes. The game of chicken sprung to mind! You don't argue with big juggernauts and a swerve into the verge is the only action to take.
"Pakistan, in common with developing countries, cannot rely upon a comprehensive taxation system like those in developed countries. Roads have traditionally been considered a low priority in respect of Federal Government Funds. It's not much of a surprise that roads were substandard and in a poor state of disrepair. But that's enough of 1992 for now!"
I spent most of my time in Rawalpindi which is about five miles from Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. A bit like a Manchester and Salford type of pairing but and Islamabad and Rawalpindi are slightly more further apart. Rawalpindi has been around for centuries, whereas Islamabad was established following the birth of Pakistan in 1947. Both cities are in the Punjab province to the North West of the country (click icon to see the map) and Karachi in the southern Sind province used to be the Capital and is still by far the largest city in Pakistan.
The road layouts in both cities couldn't be more diverse. Rawalpindi in line with most other towns and cities in the world has its network based on historical radial routes. In contrast to this the road layout of Islamabad is based on a grid network. If you click the graphic to get a larger map, you can see the contrast. Each grid square you see in Islambad is 2km x 2km. Rows are given letters and columns are given numbers, so you have sectors such as G6 and I8. The lines in red showing the gridiron are actually at grade dual carriageways. Within each sector, you get neighbourhoods or retail and business areas depending on the sector, and a local network of roads. When Islamabad was first planned it was supposed to expand towards the western end of the map. The land is still there if Islamabad goes through expansive economic growth.
Islamabad and Rawalpindi
We're in the capital, so let's start with the Parliament. There is a roundabout in front of it, with a familiar triangular warning sign. Such warning signs, wherever found, are not too dissimilar to those in the UK Traffic Signs Manual.
The location of the photo is shown on the Islamabad/Rawalpindi map as a black circle labelled "1".
Some thirty kilometres to the north west of Islamabad is the hill resort town of Murree, which during the hot summer is a welcome escape from the heat of the capital as it is a few degrees cooler due to the altitude. The road to Muree was a single carriageway road which provided very limited safe overtaking oppurtunities, but this time I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had been dualled by another single carriageway road being built along side it - Parallel Widening. Photo is taken from Position 2 on the map. This is now a much safer road, with barriers in the central reserve which look like permanent versions of temporary vehicle concrete barriers (TVCBs). I liked the alternating black and yellow painting scheme.
The dual carriageway stops on the outskirts of Murree where there is a Toll Plaza. Toll Plazas are positioned at 20-30mile intervals along the main trunk roads, since there is no road tax system in place in Pakistan. After the Toll Plaza the road becomes a single carriageway road which snakes up the hill towards the town of Murree. The last two photos were from within a Toyota Hiace Minibus (a.k.a. Wagon), the view outside is partially obscured by the interior decor of the wagon!
The M2 Motorway
About two years ago, Pakistan's very first Motorway, the M2, was opened up to traffic. It has been built from Islamabad to Lahore which is the largest city in the Punjab Province. Below is a journey describing some of the route. The journey went from Islamabad to Lahore via the new M2 and the return followed the historical route of the Grand Trunk Road via Gujranwalla and Jhelum.
The Grand Trunk (GT road) where it skims past the central area of Rawalpindi is called the Mall Road. Mall Road (map location 4) has been a dual carriageway as far as I can remember. The road performs as a radial into the city and also as part of a ring road type of network around Rawalpindi and Islamabad, it's no wonder it's always very busy. We head out along Mall road towards the Motorway junction about 5 miles to the North East of Rawalpindi.
Advance direction verge signs show us that the Motorway is 2km away (map location 5). In Pakistan the Grand Trunk road network used to be the best thoroughfares available to motorists and all direction signs had blue backgrounds. In many European countries the motorways have signs with blue backgrounds, but here blue has already been taken by the GT roads and so all the motorway signs have green backgrounds! The signs look great as well as being bilingual - with Urdu as the other language.
An overhead gantry acts as a triumphant gateway to the new motorway (map location 6). I even felt goose pimples at the time - 1km to go!
The slip road onto the motorway for Lahore veers off to the left away from the GT Road (map location 7). To the left of the picture, there is an ad-hoc layby where there is a Coca-Cola sponsored soft drinks cafe aimed for last minute refreshment purchases by car passengers. We didn't need to stop since we were in a NATCO coach (Pakistan's equivalent to National Express Rapide) with on-board refreshments! As soon as the slip road is negotiated, we came onto a dual two lane motorway, and shortly after entry we came across a toll plaza for the motorway. The coach negotiated a left turn at a grade separated roundabout to join what looked like a mainline dual 3-lane motorway. We had in effect a TOTSO here, but unfortunately no photographic evidence to prove it! My immediate conclusion was that the dual 3 lane mainline was planned originally to continue northwards to Peshawar or to a potential new Islamabad Airport site to the north of the motorway terminus. It seemed that the short dual 2 lane section from Rawalpindi/Islamabad was intended to be a spur from the mainline.
The motorway is dual 3-lane with hard shoulders. The designers had cut through the chase and have gone for the jugular with the continuous in-situ concrete barrier in the central reserve. No messing with grassed central reserves and having to fortify them years later, as with the British experience! This picture was taken 2km away from the Pind Dadur Khan and Lilla junction, approximately half-way between Islamabad and Lahore. The first exit sign comes 2km before a junction, and is a single-armed gantry sign.
The motorway was built under a special agreement between the the Pakistan Government and the South Korean commercial and manufacturing giants - Daewoo (a name which we associate with cars, but Daewoo are massive throughout Asia synoymous with a wide range of products and services from household appliances to construction). Daewoo built the motorway under a concession with toll revenue collection powers. The agreement was unique in that it allowed construction to continue in spite of several changes in Government. Many large construction schemes had fallen to the wayside as a result of diverse policy changes made by successive Governments. This was different! The Daewoo name can be seen on various parts of the motorway like on hillsides, ownership of service stations and even a fleet of quality coaches bearing the name of 'Daewoo Express'.
The picture shows a verge sign showing 1km to the exit. The sign is straight but looks distorted because of the curved windscreen at the front of my coach, the high speed of the coach and the relatively slow shutter speed of my camera.
The last signs before the exit are on a full overhead gantry. There is a toll plaza at the end of each exit slip road. At each interchange where there is an overbridge, the name of the interchange can be seen on the bridge deck. There is no junction numbering strategy as in the UK, but each interchange is named after the town. This particular junction is called "Lilla Interchange". In Britain, those familiar with eg. M6 Juntion 31 or M62 Junction 27 refer to them as the Samlesbury and Gildersome Interchanges respectively. It means, therefore, that a minimal local knowledge is required on the M2.
Our coach made a scheduled stop at a Service Station near Kellar Kahar, approximately midway between Islamabad/Rawalpindi and Lahore. It's a one company show here, the service station belongs to Daewoo. It has all what you would expect from a modern service station such as conveniences, restaurant, shops, petrol station and...
...a mosque! This is, after all, a Muslim country. Unlike at British service stations, you are guaranteed to be spared the infamous "All Day Breakfast" here! Soon we were on our way again and due to fading light and my camera flash reflecting against the coach windows I couldn't take any more photos on this leg. The M2 threaded through the "Salt Range" of hills with substandard horizontal and vertical radii - rather like a snaking mountain pass route but with 6 lanes! However, the speed limit was reduced to 60kph in this area, with the Motorway Patrol Police Vehicles visibly present in numbers to deter speedsters. The M2 came to an end as we turned onto the chaotic Lahore city streets, by then it was completely dark. Islamabad to Lahore - a four hour journey via the M2, a journey which could have taken up to twice as long 12 years ago!
The GT Road
After a few days of sightseeing in Lahore, we headed back towards Islamabad, this time along the GT Road. The GT Road between Lahore and Islamabad used to be single carriageway. During 1992 a second carriageway was being constructed by parallel widening between Lahore and Gujranwalla. The carriageway on the right in the picture is the more recent carriageway. A much safer road as a result.
At this stage I must apologise for the loss in picture quality, this was due to the rear windscreen of the "wagon" I was in.
Gujranwalla is a big commercial steel-making town which also boasts having a Cricket World Cup Finals venue. The GT Road for as long as I remember always bypassed Gujranwalla to its south and west sides, even when it was a single carriageway. Now the road is dualled and there are gantry signs where there used to be verge signs. The GT Road has become a magnet for all types of commercial developments. There are pinch points due to junctions with historical radial routes into the town.
After Gujranwalla, the GT Road went through Kharian, Gujrat (a town whose name is not to be confused with the Indian province of Gujarat), Jhelum, Dina, Gujar Khan and then back to Rawalpindi. Traffic flowed smoothly on the dual carriageway. The 6 hour journey was split in Jhelum whilst I visited long-lost relatives.
Under Construction
Back to Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The road joining Mall Road (GT Road) to Faizabad which is called "Khyaban Sir Sayed" is currently a choc-a-block single carriageway road. There is a scheme under construction called the Faizabad-Pirwadhai-GT Road Dual Carriagway Project. This is being built alongside the existing road.
The current road negotiates a railway level crossing (Map position 9). This causes considerable delay when a train passes, not only to the road traffic but to the train as well! The manually operated gates of the level crossing take longer to close as the drivers on the road do not co-operate with the signalmen.
This problem will be no more when the new dual carriageway will pass under the bridge being constructed (Map position 10). No, I was not trespassing on the new bridge during construction, but this photo and the previous one were both taken from a much safer vantage point - the interior of the 12:30 train from Rawalpindi to Peshawar!
Once this road is complete there would be a high quality series of road surrounding Rawalpindi and Islamabad. I have heard that the M3 motorway construction project is underway joining Lahore and Multan, again under a privately financed, construction and toll levy concession. I am told that Islamabad will eventually be joined to Peshawar by another similar scheme in the future (it may be called the M1). The long term plan is to have a continuous series of privately financed motorways from Peshawar in the North to Karachi in the south.
Reflections
It was fabulous to see the improvement of roads between the towns and cities in Pakistan. There is improvement needed to the roads within the towns and cities, and the railways (which owe much to the colonial legacy) do need modernising. Congratulations to Pakistan for a great job done, more of the same please for the inner cities and public transport!
Shahed M Chaudhary
